In this past week I’ve seen 3 situations where business owners did not take the advice of the specialist engaged to deliver it.  Here is what happened.

Situation One: Involved a company in financial distress; where the business owner simply had no idea how to get out of his situation.  He conveyed his situation to several different advisors and each were adamant in the direction he should take.  The trouble was, the advice from each was so diametrically opposed, it only became more confusing.  In the end he simply chose one to follow, angering the others because each felt they were right.  Time will tell, but it’s looking like his own gut feel was correct.

Situation Two: Involved a successful company that was heavily impacted by the Global Financial Crisis.  Sales had declined by half yet costs remained unchanged, and it was clear the company had to restructure urgently or perish.  Retrenchments were necessary, but the method recommended for this did not sit well with the owner who had a strong and caring relationship with his employees.  He agonised over the decision about how to do it in a way that would meet his own moral code, and in the end went against the advice to do it his way.  The outcome was a tremendous success with the exiting staff actually agreeing to the need to be retrenched, and using his own style has those staff leaving on a friendly note.

Situation Three: Involved a business owner negotiating to sell a family asset that was co-owned by a sibling.  Relations had broken down so significantly, it was almost to the demise of all parties.  Advice had been sought and a plan of action had been agreed, but when the deal was required to settle, the family business owner went with his gut feel rather than taking the advice entirely.  He orderd a change in tact, resulting in a successful outcome for all.

What this tells us is that Experts can only provide you with so much guidance, and their advice will only ever be as good as the information you provide about the situation or problem and the experts own experience.  In some of the cases, the experts involved were put out and even became angry at their client, but their clients were correct to follow their own intuition.

So as a business advisor, you’re probably wondering why I would share with you about cases where the clients were clearly in a better position to decide for themselves ultimately, as it seems a bad advertisement for specialist consultants.  However that is my point entirely.

No specialist is going to be right every time, but you are quite right to consider many alternative views before you make your decision about the matter at hand.  By listening to others in the know, you are learning valuable information formulated from their previous experience and knowledge base.  When you blindly follow advice, there is likely to be more trouble ahead than can handled, so listening, thinking through and weighing up the options for an outcome that sits well with you, is the most effective thing you can do.

Here to Your Profitable Exit!

Leigh Riley

While at Derby Day Races in Melbourne on Saturday, I met a person named Fran who’s brother had created a new essential and innovative building tool that is soon to be released. I cannot tell you too much about it because that would be breaching a confidence, but I can share with you exactly what I told her when she enquired about what they must do to make their business idea work for them.  Here’s the ten points I made to her:

Protect Your Intellectual Property

1. The innovation is unique and must be patented to boost your business valuation and protect the uniqueness of the product from being copied.  Anything really good will undoubtedly be copied even with a patent in place.  The trouble is, intellectual property thieves know exactly how much they can modify a new idea to legally re-produce a modified version and move in on your market share.  You have only a short space of time to gain enough market share before competitors move in on your territory.

Start With The End In Mind

2. You’ll want to understand your target audience (who wants to buy your product) and co-ordinate your marketing plan to help you gain that preferred market.  Being ‘first to market’ is a big plus for product sales as people love to embrace new and different time saving and safety ideas.  Having a strategy to engage with your target audience will be the difference between carving your market share quickly and being superseded or over-run by advanced and improved versions of your product by competitors.  You have a short  window of opportunity is to carve your corporate footprint and build your market share.  Never underestimate your competitors who will be quick to move into your space if it is a lucrative market.

3. Set a budget to meet the costs of marketing, distribution and selling costs.  Track expenditure against results.  This will help you to establish the market price of the items to be sold.  If you don’t have the budget to do this, find assistance so you can launch it well.

4. Make a big splash and noise about the product to launch the idea with a compelling up-beat story that attracts attention from media and purchasers.  You have to spread the word about your new product, and the best way to get the word out is to leverage from others that can help share your story.  Gaining some coverage on programs such as ABC’s “new inventors” can be a great way to spread the word about the new product without spending a lot on advertising.

Leverage Your Message To Boost Your Business Profits

5. Develop a Public Relations campaign to build a plan to engage all types of the media.   Send press releases to magazines and newspapers that your target audience frequently reads.  Radio and TV interviews are also very helpful to inform your market quickly.  Don’t forget to utilize the internet with YouTube and with other social media to demonstrate your offering.     

6. Install a lean but effective Sales and Distribution arm of your business by engaging positive people that share your vision and passion for your product.  You’ll want them to be proactively chasing sales by implementing a sales strategy aligned to your corporate vision.

7.  Stay ahead of the curve by continually researching and developing your product so you may maintain market leadership.  Remember your competitors lack the creativity that you have and at best be able to replicate your offering.  If you continue to modify and improve your product, competitors will always remain one step behind. 

8. If you don’t have the capital to support your strategy the way you must to succeed, and banks are not willing to take the risk on your new innovation, then seek out government grants and capital raising opportunities to assist with funding a strategy to promote your product.  If you’re not sure how, take the opportunity to utilize skills of someone that can help.

9.  Take a business approach from start up to step down.  That means having a vision and direction, like plotting a course with a succession strategy.  You’ve done all the hard work for a reason, and you’ll want to be rewarded financially for the effort and risk you’ve endured.  Utilize my PROFITS™ Keys system (Your Business Succession Book) to put yourself on a path of success through to exit.

10. Dare to dream, and drive your passion to make it become a reality!  You get one chance to get it right, so run forth with ‘informed’ reckless abandon!  It’s the only way to build your business into a valuable asset that will one day sell.

Government Grants May Help

The Exit Experts has access to number of grant opportunities you might like to explore to source some assistance with getting your innovative products and business off the ground and running sooner.  Help is just a phone call (1300 499 225) or email away.

Here’s to your profitable business succession!

Leigh Riley

I was listening to my iPod when I read the news of Steve Jobs passing earlier today due to pancreatic cancer.  It rocked me, at the sad loss to his family and the company he’d built over 30 years of his 56 years of life.

But Did Steve Really Die?

I’m not trying to be glib about such a sad event in history, but I am serious with my belief that Steve lives on because of the incredible legacy he has left to the world with his creations.  Steve not only placed his very own special mark on the Apple company that is now a world-wide household name, his legend will continue for generations ahead.

At age 21, he started Apple with two colleagues from his parents garage with minimal start up capital.  They dreamed big, then made those dreams a reality. A business rollercoaster unfolded, with mistakes made and disputes unravelling a power struggle that forced Steve out of the company in 1985.  Never being one to be held back, Steve forged forward developing the animation studio Pixar that he acquired, and in 1997 returned to Apple, completely turning around the then struggling company, boosting its value off the charts.

The resurgence of Apple under Steve Job’s vision and management saw it become the USA’s most successful company with more cash than the US government, but it is the innovation that has completely revolutionised the computer world that resonates most.

Steve understood very well the impact of succession, continuity and legacy.  He has exited from Apple twice.  The first time proved to almost be the company’s demise, but the second time around, he’d learned the lessons and this time he built it for continuity. He knew how to boost his business by reaching for the stars, but also how to inspire a team to follow on and implement to make it all a reality.  I say that Steve lives on through his legacy, as he will go down in history as having been an inspiration to all entrepreneurs with a dream and as having had a lasting profound impact on society for decades to come.

My team “The Exit Experts” send our most sincere and heart-felt condolences to Steve’s wife and 4 children whose loss must seem indescribable right now.  Steve’s body may rest in peace, but his legacy continues on.

The Ultimate Succession Plan

For me Steve has become the guidepost for what I would term the ultimate ideal business ’continuity strategy’, because there aren’t too many phenomenal leaders that can leave their post without so much as a hint of financial hitch in sight like Steve has.

What are you doing today that will build your business legacy so it can continue on well after you exit?

Here’s to your successful business exit!

Leigh Riley

Business is a Competition

I’ve not revealed this before, but earlier this year I was invited to be on the panel of judges for the “ActionCoach My Business Magazine Awards”.  I felt it was a great honour to be asked so could not refuse the request.  The task was not easy for many reasons.  The number of entrants was significant and thousands of pages of data had to be considered carefully to form an assessment of each candidate.  With most being of such an incredibly high standard, this truly made the task for judges very difficult.  Amazingly though, most of us formed a fairly similar opinion of those candidates that really stood out from the crowd.

It got me thinking about how important it is to stand out from the crowd when you’re in business, and not just to win competitions.  It demonstrated to me yet again, that it’s no accident when a business is successful.  It does become obvious to everyone when you stand out from others in business, and there is a lesson in it for each of us in business.

As a follower and regular reader of this blog, you already know that I bang the drum (rather loudly) about business succession, and I do so because you are operating a business that I know you will one day hope to sell.  You’re working hard building an asset, and often you’re so hard working ‘in’ it, that you can overlook working ‘on’ it.

I want to see my followers succeed and stand out from the crowd, especially the crowd that is gathering around the ‘for sale’ post.  I’m referring to the tsunami I mention in my book “Your Business Succession”, because the average demographic age group of small to medium sized business owners are so near to retirement and are looking for ways to extract their equity to move on to another phase in their life.  With so many about to do this (80% in the next 5 to 10 years) there will be quite a crowd of businesses selling.  It will become a buyer’s market and only those that ’stand out’ from the crowd will gain the most when they exit.

You Business Succession
Leigh Riley

Too Young To Exit?  Think Again

Now before you zone out because you think you’re too young for formal exit strategies and succession plans to matter, think about these two very important points:

• 50% of business owners leave well before retirement because of factors they could not have imagined, such as dispute, divorce, disability and death.  You don’t want to get caught out in a weakened position trying to liquidate your business equity in a crowded market, so take steps to ensure you have an action plan that will keep you in control to capitalise when you exit despite your circumstances.
• Raising Capital to grow your business or release your equity when exiting your business takes time to organise.  In fact it’s damn hard for an SME like yours to get finance for anything related to business if you don’t have a clearly demonstrated and formal exit strategy in place. That means your business growth could be stifled or you could get stuck without any funding when you do leave.  Either scenario is one you definitely want to overcome well beforehand, so get ready now.

Time For Your Business To Stand Out In The Crowd!

The  reason I’ve commenced a series of FREE educational webinars, is so you can see what you can do to ’stand out’ and make the difference for maximised cash flow and profits, with an enhanced  business valuation and a strategy to ensure you get paid what you deserve for your lifetime of effort in business, through most circumstances.

I’m pleased to reveal the finalists have been chosen for the ‘ActionCoach My Business Awards’ .  You may see those that ’stood out’ for yourself by clicking here.

Here’s to your business success and profitable exit!

Leigh Riley

Australian Websites Sales Are Booming, Is Your Business Cashing In?

Australian Internet sales rose to $51 billion (3.6% of GDP) during 2010 and this is rising.  If you’re trying to BOOST the value of your business, that’s a business statistic you simply cannot ignore.  If you haven’t already made an attempt to learn how to ride the web wave, it’s likely your customers or clients could soon be choosing competitors over you, leaving you with that ‘dumped by a wave’ feeling or worse, with a dramatic fall in sales adversely impacting your business valuation.

Ride the Web Wave to Wealth for Your Business

The web wave has been building for a while, but many businesses have been caught out by failing to understand how the internet has enabled a broader trading field with global wide competitors rather than those only in the immediate community.  Some of you may have thought too narrowly and failed to realise your customer base has potentially widened significantly.  Without a strong internet presence you are failing to capitalise on that potential and not boosting your business valuation the way you could be.

If you’ve established a website, you’ve started paddling toward the web wave to wealth and success for your business, but this alone is not enough if your business is to stand out and be found online amongst the trillions of sites already in cyberspace.  You might be surprised to learn that having website prominance in your niche is not just about expensive advertising.  There is a lot you can do to organically lift your search engine ranking and get found.  It just takes a little knowledge with some training to make the difference.

FREE Webinar to Learn How to BOOST Your Website Traffic for Increased Online Sales

I want to help you take every opportunity to BOOST your business valuation and profits however I can.  That’s why I’ve decided to have a FREE Webinar on the topic: How To BOOST Your Business Valuation With Your Website! The FREE webinar will be held this Thursday at two different timeslots, 11:30am and 7:30pm.  I’ll be interviewing special guest and website expert, Karyn Clarke from HubsiteBuilder.com.  During the sessions, Karyn has promised to reveal 6 of her best secrets about how to BOOST your website ranking organically, so you can get your business found and start to make more sales online.

If you’re looking to ride the web wave to wealth and success for your business to BOOST its valuation, you really can’t afford to miss this session with me and Karyn.

Register by clicking here now. Who knows, it could turn out to be the most profitable 45 minutes you spend learning about your business website presence.  Don’t delay because places are limited to just 14 attendees.

Here’s to your BOOSTING Your Business Valuation With Profits From Your Website!

Leigh Riley

Small to Medium sized business (SME’s) often struggle to raise capital for expansion plans, especially since the Global Financial Crisis.  It’s even harder for SME’s to liquidate part of their business when they need cash to fund other activities, which is one of the reasons having an SME is considered risky.

Financiers are more reluctant to loan on SMEs because of the illiquid nature of them.  If Financiers find themselves having to foreclose on the business they’ve loaned funds to that is struggling financially, the last thing they want to do is run the business.  They prefer to liquidate quickly to regain the capital loaned.  This is typically harder to do for SME’s, and that is why more and more Financiers are demanding SME’s have a clear path of succession and a formal exit strategy to enable them to recoup the funds loaned more quickly if the business folds.

But what if my team could show you a way for SME’s to fund capital raising easily and provide a facility to liquidate the business quickly if needed?

That’s exactly what I intend to do in my next Webinar:  “How Smart Entrepreneurs Raise Capital to Grow or Go From Their Business”.

When you register for the Webinar, you’re going to discover some of the most innovative techniques you’ve ever heard about raising capital for your business, and you’re going to see a live case in action to demonstrate how easy it is to raise capital.

You’re going to uncover things like:

• 8 Funding Solutions for Growing or Going
• 2 Proven Legal Methods to Raise Capital in Australia
• How the valuation process is crucial for raising capital for your company, and how being able to raise capital easily can help BOOST your business valuation
• 5 Essentials for Good Capital Raising
• 7 Risk factors you’ll want to overcome to ensure you attract the capital you require
• There’ll be a live case demonstrated to show you how easy it is
• We’re going to make you an offer to get started raising your business capital right away.

The best bit is that it’s totally FREE to attend!  You can join our 45 minute Webinar/Teleseminar by registering here now.

The Capital Raising Webinar/Teleseminar will be held on:

Wednesday 5th October 2011  at 7.30pm

Or

Thursday 6th October 2011 at 11.30am.

If you’re looking to Grow or Go from your business soon, you can’t afford to miss “How Smart Entrepreneurs Raise Capital to Grow or Go From Their Business”

Here’s to your profitable exit strategy with easy capital raising!

Leigh Riley

Background: Apple Founder Steve Jobs made the iPod and iPad famous household names to build a business that has more cash than the whole of the USA government. But with all that success, Steve knew that one day he would leave the business he’d put his heart and soul into.

Strategy: Steve’s successor, Tim Cook has been groomed to fill Steve’s shoes for the past 13 years and consequently has the confidence of Steve, Apple’s board and the market in general.  No one knows more than Steve Jobs the events that can personally lead to ‘exiting a business’ well before time.  The first time he was forced from Apple was due to dispute.  The second, due to illness.  As a result, Steve is a strong advocate of succession planning for your business.

Outcome: We could all pick an apple out of Steve’s orchard to gain some insight into how our own businesses should be operated, because it is a recipe for success that cannot be put down to luck alone.  For years Apple floundered until Steve’s innovation turned it around.  Steve is not only an inspiration in business, but also in life.  Check out this video:

I’ll leave you with these wise words from Steve: 

“No one wants to die, even people who believe they will go to heaven don’t want to die to get there; and yet death is the destination we all share, no one has ever escaped it….  Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone elses life, don’t be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people’s thinking, don’t let the noise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice, and most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become, everything else is secondary”.

Time to wake up and get on with it.

Boost your business valuation in preparation for your eventual departure.

To Your Profitable Business Succession!
Leigh Riley

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How can You Boost Your Business Valuation?

Increase Your Business Acquisition Attractiveness by:

• Developing a market presence that is desired by potential buyers
• Obtain critical mass with demonstrated consistent growth across niches
• Maintain higher margins than your competitors
• Add value with a management team and systems
• Create effective planning that aligns your business motives with your employee’s actions

If you haven’t already done so, make sure you register yourself to attend the FREE Webinar I’m running so you can learn all you need to know about how to BOOST your Business Valuation.  I’ll be interviewing Business Valuation Guru, Sean Hutchinson live from San Francisco. Sean excels in explaining the levers you can control to increase your business valuation and I’m very certain you will learn a lot from listening to him. Register for

Date: Thursday 8th September, 2011
Time: 11.30am
Register Now for the FREE webinar at http://yourbusinesssuccession.com/bizval-webinar1.php

You can’t afford to miss this opportunity to learn all you can about how to BOOST your business profits and valuation.

Here’s to Your Profitable Business Exit!

Leigh Riley

Previous article in series |

How can You Boost Your Business Valuation?

During the last post, we discussed how building a robust financial history for your business can help to BOOST your business valuation.  Many business owners mistakenly believe that BOOSTING their business financial position is the only to change the way their business is valued and viewed in the market place.   You may be surprised to learn that risk mitigation strategies can play a much larger part in BOOSTING your business valuation.

Lever Two: Reduce Risk to BOOST your business valuation.

You will learn a lot more about this at the FREE Webinar I’m running on

Date: Thursday 8th September, 2011
Time: 11.30am

where I’ll be interviewing Sean Hutchinson, Business Valuation Guru live from San Francisco.  Click here to register your place now.  Here’s a brief look at the second lever you can control to BOOST your business valuation.

Reduce Risk and BOOST your business valuation by:

• Understanding the sweet spots that contribute most to your business profitability so that you may rule out lesser profitable activities thereby increasing the economic value of activities engaged in your business
• Decrease your business capital base to remove underperforming activities
• Strategise to mitigate specific risks identifiable to your business industry and insure key persons of your company to implement a clearly defined and formal succession strategy, thereby making your business more attractive to financiers and capital raising sources.  Buyers will always value higher a business that has the ability to raise capital due to it’s robust risk managment strategies.
• Operate more efficiently than your competitors and lower the cost of capital by continually testing the market to compare costs of debt and capital raising
• Reduce customer concentration with diversification, so that your business has no more than 10 to 25% of revenue from one source.  Signing customers to long term contracts will secure your business revenue into the future, adding a significant valuation boost.
• Form a management structure so you as the owner, are not central to the business

In the next post, I intend to discuss how to increase the economic value of activities your business engages in to BOOST its valuation.

Until then, make sure you register for your FREE place at the Webinar to be held on Thursday 8th Septemeber 2011 at 11.30am.
You can’t afford to miss this opportunity to learn all you can about how to BOOST your business profits and valuation.

Here’s to Your Profitable Business Exit!

Leigh Riley

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How can You Boost Your Business Valuation?

Here is a taste-test of some of the items to be covered in the FREE Webinar I’m running on:
Date: Thursday 8th September, 2011
Time: 11.30am

You will discover how to BOOST your Business Valuation when I interview Business Guru, Sean Hutchinson, live from San Francisco. Sean is sensational at explaining the levers you can control to increase your business valuation. You can Register Now for your place at the FREE webinar at http://yourbusinesssuccession.com/bizval-webinar.php

In this post, we will discuss How can you Increase Earnings in a way that increases your business market valuation?  Here’s how:

Lever One:

Build a Robust Financial History for your business by:

1. Increasing sales, but not just any sales.  Increase the sales of your products and services that add the most economic value to your business.  It’s worth spending the time to understand which of your products and services are the most profitable to your business.  Making more sales of products and services that are not overly profitable doesn’t make good sense.  If you want to BOOST your business valuation, concentrate on increasing sales where it counts most.
2. Lowering cost of goods sold means taking control of the input costs of production of your products and services, to increase profitability.  You may want to renegotiate with suppliers to lock in lower in-put costs. If your business sells services, consider how you may reduce costs by making more efficient use of lower cost labour and materials. Segmenting the costs of your service offerings will allow you to understand which of your goods and or services provides the least and most economic benefit to your business.
3. Controlling operating expenses Segmenting the costs of your service offerings will allow you to understand which of your services provides the least and most economic benefit to your business.  Once you can clearly define the most profitable products or services sold by your business, you will be in the position to make decisions about how your business will continue forward.

Timely Factors: don’t leave it ’til the 11th hour

Understanding fully the levers that you can control and manoevering them to boost your business valuation, can take time.  For some strange reason, business people too often think they don’t need to worry about it until the moment before they exit. Here are the important reasons why that’s faulty thinking:

More than half of business owners will be forced from their business due to factors they could not have imagined (statistics show 51% leave due to sudden and unplanned events).

• The sudden event means there is no time to prepare; and
• When you’re vulnerable due to unplanned events, it leaves you without power to negotiate

This means you are forced to be a ‘price taker’ and to accept whatever is offered without question.

The time it takes to build a business of value means it is not something you can leave to the last minute or just prior to exiting.

Business Boosters

In the next post of this series, stay tuned for: “How Can You Increase Earnings in a way that increases your business market valuation”, I’m going to reveal the 6 risks you must overcome in your business if you are to increase your business market valuation.  You’re going to be surprised at how large a part mitigating risk in your business will BOOST and contribute to your business valuation.

Until then, make sure you register for your FREE place at the Webinar to be held on Thursday 8th Septemeber 2011 at 11.30am. You can’t afford to miss this opportunity to learn all you can about how to BOOST your business profits and valuation.

Here’s to Your Profitable Business Exit!

Leigh Riley

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